Monday, October 23, 2006

Good Tools Can Make Bad Products

Just because a theory is logical doesn’t mean it is true. It is possible to make up a theory or belief that is entirely logical from an internal point of view but is a complete fantasy which bears no relation to reality. People with psychiatric illnesses are capable of having very logical delusions. The test of experience is always required to turn logic into truth.

Even within the area of Mathematics it is not possible to construct truth that is purely reliant on internal logic. Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is a much used and abused piece of work. This basically states no mathematical system can prove every mathematical truth. This has been interpreted as ‘nothing can be proved to be true, every belief is subjective and therefore faith is as valid as science and rationality’. Not surprisingly, mention of Godel’s work crops up in defense of religious faith. This is a misinterpretation of Godel’s work. What Godel was saying is that there is mathematical truth, but language is not sufficient to prove it. This was quite a distressing thought to mathematicians at the time, but it makes perfect sense if you accept logic as a tool of rationality rather than truth itself. Logic simply helps build theories and beliefs which are worth testing.

Lack of contradiction is a key part of a logical system. If a contradictory statement can be made about the same subject, it is not logical and by implication not true. The problem with contradiction is that it can exist. Light was, over different periods of time, thought to either a wave or a particle. These possibilities were seen to be contradictory, but caused problems because light displayed attributes of both particles and waves. This was solved by Einstein’s work on wave particle duality, which showed that everything has attributes of both waves and particles. This was not a true contradiction, but it was the testing against reality that showed the lack of contradiction. What seems like a contradiction sometimes is not. The failure is in the language, the fix is in experience.

Similarity as a tool of rational thought helps us take short cuts that often prove to be true. If something looks like a tiger and acts like a tiger, it probably is a tiger. If, however, you have never seen any other kind of big cat, you could mistake a leopard for a tiger. Animals are used to test medicines before being given to humans. This is done because of the biological similarity of some animals to humans. Regardless of whether you agree with this practice or not, it usually leads to safe drugs - usually but not always. At some point you have to test the drugs on humans to know if they really are safe. Similarity is a good tool of rational thought, but it does not replace experience.

Proximity, like similarity, is a useful short cut to truth. If two events happen close to each other in time and space, they are more likely to be related. There is, however, nothing certain about it. If someone is ill, they will tend to see every physical discomfort as a symptom of whatever they are suffering from. The recorded experience of hundreds of people with the same illness will give a better indication of symptoms. Repeatable experience is what confirms or rejects the relations of things which are close in time or space.

Cause and effect is something that we know is always present because we always see it. It can sometimes be possible, however, to confuse cause and effect. If, for example, an illness has a number of effects, it can be possible to confuse one of the symptoms as a cause. This can be especially true when something has a complex cause that is made up of more than one factor. If something is extremely complex and has a large number of contributing factors, it may be impractical to determine exact causes and therefore necessary to retreat back to a description of probability and associated risk factors. Although exact cause and effect has been abandoned in these cases, the use of probability is still useful. Even when a rationally precise position has been abandoned experience still proves useful.

The concept of cause and effect seems to contain within in it a paradox. If everything has a cause, then what happens when you trace back to the beginning of time? You have to keep going for infinity otherwise you have to accept that there is some first cause that has nothing preceding it, some uncaused cause. If cause and effect contains a paradox, it is not logical. As with Godels Incompleteness Theorem, this is disturbing if you view it as truth. As with Godel, it is fine if you accept that it is simply a tool of rationality rather than truth. The principles of cause and effect help us choose what to test against experience. As with Godel, the cause and effect paradox are often quoted as a defense of God. God is the first cause, the uncaused cause. God is required because of the paradox. This is poor logic in itself as it gives no explanation why God is a solution. Why the solution couldn’t be something other than an intelligent and omniscient being is not explained. The nature of time itself is also not yet fully explored and there are other possibilities that could resolve this apparent paradox. Time could be circular and therefore without beginning. There may be other solutions that we will become aware of as science develops further. The paradox may never be suitably resolved but measurement against experience allows us to use cause and effect regardless. We can use it as a tool and view it as that.

All of the tools of rationality are just that, tools. They can be used to create good theories and used to create bad theories. It is the testing of the theories against experience that tells us which is which. No matter how elegant a theory is, it is nothing until tested against experience. Rational enquiry is the willingness to question and to test. It must include the willingness to question and to test, because, as can be seen, rational thought is never fully self contained. Rational thought worked through properly is self-aware of its own limitations. It either accepts testing against reality as the correction or arbitrary truths as starting points upon which to build. When you start with arbitrary truths, absolutely anything can be true and you end up in a totally subjective reality. As the success of the scientific method has shown, reality is not subjective. Reality is something we all hit up against every day.

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